Every time I buy something from Shills, I giggle a little about the fact the brand is called Shills, then I pay. Of course.

Shills is a funny little range, I haven’t tried anything from the range yet that I love – it all feels a bit cack handed, like the packaging is somewhat unfinished and some of the cosmetics are just rip offs of Benefit products. Nevertheless…I loved the halloween look of the Purifying Peel Off Black Mask and Deep Sebum Softener.

These are separate items – NOT part of a set so you will need to buy them individually. Having said that they are apparently well suited to each other!….

The Shills Purifying mask is black because it contains carbon. It is good for removing blackheads, dirt, dead skin and even fine hairs! it is applied on dry skin and left for around 20 minutes then peeled off.

The Deep Sebum Softener contains papaya enzymes and bamboo charcoal powder – it is a clear gel which you massage into the affected area so that it heats up (the product itself doesn’t heat up but it works best if you can get it warm), then you leave for 3 minutes. Wash this off then use the black mask.

Here is a sexy picture of the deep sebum gel working:

Oh gross I know. I did once have a product that did exactly what is outlined above and I can tell you that this Shills product does NOT bring the blackheads to the surface. It seems to soften the skin up so that you can extract easier than if you did nothing at all to prep the skin but it’s not quite the miracle product.

Megan, my cousin and star of YouTube has a few blackheads and agreed…yes, agreed to model this for me. She’s 10 years old now!

Here is the gel – it comes with a point tip so you can dot it on to the nose:

I must add I have used this and so has Mr C…we had a bit of a blackhead busting session, the three of us. My results were ok (but my nose is quite clean at the moment) and Mr C’s was better. Megan’s…well you’ll see.

There’s nothing strange or unusual about the gel – it’s just like a gel. No tingling, nothing uncomfortable about it.

This was washed off, then the black mask was applied and left for the full 20 minutes.

Megan will thank me for this one day, like when she’s a teenager.

Peeling the black mask – well, Asian black masks (also there are blue masks) are pretty tough to remove. Coincidentally, the Biore nose strips are really painful to remove (like I cry sometimes when I use them). This mask can and is used all over the face but I stuck to using them on the nose area. This doesn’t really hurt to remove, perhaps because the nose is quite oily anyway.

Use it anywhere else (I extended my mask to some of my cheeks and over my upper lip) and OW it does hurt. It removes fine hairs so you must bear this in mind if you have sensitive skin.

The result from Megan’s nose:

To be fair Megs is not that ‘congested’ but it did pull out some of her blackheads and dry skin. I noticed some fine hairs were pulled out too but it didn’t hurt her.

I personally found the results good. But not amazing. About the same as one of the tough pore strips I mentioned earlier, and if this is the case, what is the point of buying two products and taking the time to use both of them instead of just using one product?

Nevertheless I quite like the novelty factor of this product so I will continue to buy it but probably won’t rebuy.

I bought this from eBay for about £8 each but it’s only about $7.50 from Sasa.com.